[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Hemophilia

[johndallman]

Hemophilia [-30] is a mundane physical disadvantage, and a serious risk to life for anyone who gets involved with violence. It appeared in GURPS 1e, and hasn’t fundamentally changed since.

The problem starts when you get injured. Your blood will not readily clot, meaning that you bleed for further damage from any wounds. You lose hit points equal to the initial injury from each wound each minute until it’s bandaged with a successful First Aid roll (which takes a minute anyway). Impaling wounds to the torso are worse. Even once they have been bandaged, you lose hit points equal to the initial injury each day until treated with a successful Surgery roll, or supernatural healing of some kind. If you have this disadvantage, your HT may not be greater than 10, although you can presumably take Fit to improve your HT rolls. I’d be very dubious about a character with Hemophilia taking Hard to Kill.

While this disadvantage is a really bad idea for an adventurer who chose that career, having it in the game system is useful. It’s a symptom of radiation sickness, and can be used with the Temporary Disadvantage limitation.

Hemophilia doesn’t show up very much in GURPS supplements, and is only an option on templates for characters who had no choice about getting involved with something dangerous. It’s a symptom of Ebola-B in AtE, and Bio-Tech uses it in examples of genefixing, inbreeding, and how not to design a variant species. Magic (and Ritual Path Magic) has a spell to cause it, while Psionic Powers can do that with Biokinesis, and has an ability to allow safe surgery on sufferers.

The only time I’ve encountered Hemophilia in a GURPS game is in a still-unresolved plot thread of a secret-history game. There’s a male NPC who is reported to be a hemophiliac, and is supposed to have inherited it from his ostensible father (who was definitely a hemophiliac and a great-grandson of Queen Victoria). But that’s impossible: it’s an X-chromosome mutation, and a son can’t inherit an X chromosome from his father, because he’d be a daughter. Yes, there are several possible explanations, starting with the NPC not having his claimed ancestry. We may someday find out which one is true.

[Refplace]

Pretty rare to be taken by PCs in my experience.
I recall one in a fantasy game and it was part of the background for why he became a healer mage.
I also recently update one of my races for Chalice World and gave them Hemophilia.
Its a side effect of the way their cardiovascular system works and helps their skin be more sensitive to touch, easy to read and even Fit because they circulate blood so fast. Consequently they all learn First Aid growing up.

Also IIRC Thranx had it in the Flynx books and I had a PC Thranx in that campaign.
With ready access to powerful healing its not that bad, but still worth the points I think.

[RogerBW]

I can't think of a situation in which I'd want to put this on a PC, but it's very handy to have available for NPCs.

I note that impaling wounds become relatively rare in modern (mostly pi and variants) and futuristic (mostly burn and variants) games.

[Lord Azagthoth]

I've put Hemophilia back to the origin of its meaning and grouped it together with all the other Philia disadvantages and renamed this disadvantage "Bleeder".

I had one character in an old campaign (modern day setting). But he took the Mitigator modifier (always carried some hemostatica powder to assist the First Aid skill to stop the bleeding).

[ericthered]

I've never seen it used. Most medical conditions are best covered using fancy options in gurps.



I wonder what a version that made you loose HP every 10 minutes or hour instead of minute would be worth.



I'm comparing it to Weakness (untreated wounds, per minute). The size of the wounds makes things makes it hard to compare directly, but if wounds are between occasional and common, the value works out nicely. Also, it appears inflicting the damage every five minutes would halve the value, and every 30 minutes would quarter it.